Hey there ! ABABABAB…. . Oh what I meant was “Long time no see (C)”. The past weekends have been very busy for me - travelling on business and taking care of personal chores. However, I did not want to end the year without a blog. So here it is.
This is that point of the year, when an organization reflects on the year gone-by; what are the few best practices to continue onto the next year. More importantly, what are the practices that they would NOT like to repeat. The usual practice is to have a “lessons learnt” session and reflect on what went right, what went wrong - at the end of each project. However the year-end reflection, is more to take stock of the health of the entire organization. Usually reflection session are done off-site and preferably with an external leadership consultant who can observe the dynamics of the session and give valuable unbiased feedback.
Landing up in an offsite without an agenda for this session, can sometimes veer the discussion away from the main theme and may not conclude the session. Please note that the participants will be emotionally charged and want to let the steam out on the issues that have been brewing over the past year.
A formal pre-work including a frame-work to collect feedback, prior to the session will go a long way in having a fruitful session. The leader of the group has to be clear and state the objective of the session and let the external consultant moderate the discussion. Having the leader of the group as a co-participant, adds more veracity to the whole discussion. When the burning issues are debated, the leader may be tempted to defend it. But it is better to restrain from it, so that people can open-up and express their feelings and opinion freely. Based on the pre-work, one can have the team form into few groups to have parallel break-out sessions and discuss critical issues. The leads of these groups can come back and present the gist of the discussions and the actions they would like to take. The external consultant can then present his observations. The leader and the group together can prioritise the key actions.
One of the common mistakes made at this juncture is to have a laundry list of actions. Given that the following year will always be busier than the current one, it is best to take top three actions. To bring more accountability, it is advised that volunteers are sought to own these actions. If none volunteers, the leader can volunteer the owners for the actions. It is critical that the session concludes with a clear action plan and respective owners identified.
Some fun games can be planned during the course of the session to relieve the tension, if any and use this opportunity to further enhance the teamwork. Everyone likes freebies. This is the perfect opportunity to buy a book, relevant to the issues that the group is facing.
One of the follow-up of these reflections, which is usually missed, is the communication to the rest of the team, on what was accomplished in the off-site meeting. Remember that the rest of team knows that the leaders of the group were off for an off-site. If they do not hear from the leaders about what was accomplished, then they can ridicule the off-site meeting and will not be serious in implementing some of the actions that could percolate to them.
The other most critical follow-up of the reflection meeting is to tie-in the actions from the meeting to the next year’s priorities. This ensures that learnings from one year feed into the actions for the next year.
Talking about priorities, every company sets priorities every year. Similar to the reflections of a group leading to the actions/priorities for next year, a company does the same exercise with the top bosses of the company to come up with the priorities for the next year. Usually the priorities of the company are deliberately kept generic – For example Growing Market Share, this gives a sense of direction where the company wants to head.
The different business units and the sub- business units will have their own set of tangible priorities that will be linked to the company’s priority.
For nerd engineers, priorities may seem like yet another management fad. The responsibility to educate and lay emphasis on the importance of the priorities, lies with the leaders. They need to clearly communicate them so that every employee is aware of the company’s priorities and the group’s priorities. Visits by senior management of the company and the business unit to the local site are a perfect time for communicating about the priorities and reinforcing the same.
At an individual level, the leader or the supervisor has to set the priorities for the employee and show how it is linked to the group’s priority and to the business unit and company’s priority. This is very important and the employee needs to unambiguous on how his actions help meet a company’s priority.
At the turn of the new year, people talk about resolutions. Many of them make no resolutions finding the excuse that resolutions are meant to be broken so why set one at all. In the life of a person, if one takes every new year as a milestone, then these are valuable opportunities that can be used to set one goal at a time and become a better human being. These resolutions need not be big ones that are difficult to stick to. Instead of resolving to quit smoking, a person can resolve to reduce the number of cigarattes he smokes a day. May be, over a few years this will lead him to quit smoking completely.
As the new year dawns, be clear on your priorities, group’s priorities and the company’s priorities. Make and meet your new year resolutions and become a better person. Last but not the least, spend time with your near and dear. Convey your greetings to near and distant friends and family.
Wishing you all Happy Holidays and a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.
